Brewing

Dictionary of American History
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc.

BREWING

BREWING. Like wine making, brewing has existed for millennia as an art; only in the twentieth century have its practitioners attempted to transform it into an applied science. The earliest settlers brought beer from England with them to America. At that time, brewing was a household industry, carried on primarily by farmers and tavern keepers, but commercial breweries soon emerged, selling to local areas they could reach by horse and wagon. William Penn established such a business in Pennsbury in 1683, not only to make a profit but also to encourage the drinking of beer rather than hard liquor, in the interest of temperance.

The early process of brewing began by heating and soaking barley to force germination. Producers then mixed the end product, called malt, with water and boiled it to form what brewers called the wort. They then added hops to the boiling liquid to give it a pleasantly bitter taste and a distinctive aroma. After straining the liquid, brewers added yeast and allowed the wort to ferment for a few days. Until the twentieth century, brewers governed the proportions of the ingredients and the exact timing of the process by age-old recipes or simply by rule of thumb. The reputation of a commercial brewery depended greatly on the skill of its brewmaster rather than on any particular technology or equipment.

Early American beer was similar to English beer, which was fermented with yeast that floated on top of the wort. Near the middle of the nineteenth century, the many German immigrants to the United States brought a different type of beer. Following German brewing traditions, they used a yeast that stayed at the bottom of the wort during fermentation. Then, after its removal, they

allowed the fermented wort to age at low temperatures for some weeks. The milder and more aromatic German lager soon captured most of the beer market, and the English type of fermentation became confined to ale.

From about 1875, technological and scientific changes took place in brewing that made it very difficult for the amateur or small-scale operator to compete with the up-to-date, large brewery. The railroad made it possible for breweries with limited local markets, such as those in Milwaukee, Wis., to seek nationwide distribution—which, in turn, required beer able to withstand temperature changes, bumping, and the lapse of time. From the 1880s, pasteurization checked bacterial growth, chemical additives were eliminated (this was enforced by law in 1907), bottling became mechanized, and brewers devised new methods to artificially control carbonation levels. In addition to changing their product, commercial brewers infiltrated the territory of local brewers by devising new business tactics to influence local sellers, ranging from discounts and credits to purchases of saloon properties.

The brewing industry that revived after the years of Prohibition (1919–1933) had most of the same large producers but operated in a quite different environment from the old one. Because Prohibition had accustomed people to drinking hard liquor, it took a dozen years to build the market for beer back to its pre–World War I size. As late as 1970, domestic consumption of beer still remained slightly less per capita than it had been in 1914. Meanwhile, the motor truck, cans, and a more exact understanding of the chemistry of brewing aided the competitive position of the larger breweries relative to would-be small-scale producers. There were only 150 brewers in 1970, compared to 1,400 in 1914, and fewer than a dozen sold their product throughout the nation. Since all these companies could make reliable beer with many desirable qualities and were forbidden by federal law from controlling outlets, competition was chiefly in marketing and rapid adjustment to changes in public taste.

In 1976, however, the federal government legalized home brewing, and in the late 1970s and 1980s a number of small-scale "craft" brewers emerged to capture loyal local, regional, and eventually national followings. Craft beer sales began to grow exponentially in the 1990s, as sales from larger commercial brewers flattened out, causing some to declare a "Beer Rennaissance" in the United States and leading many larger brewers to begin marketing their own versions of the stronger, darker beers that regional breweries and microbreweries had so successfully popularized.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baron, Stanley Wade. Brewed in America: A History of Beer and Ale in the United States. Boston: Little, Brown, 1962.

Cochran, Thomas C. The Pabst Brewing Company: The History of an American Business. New York: New York University Press, 1948.

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Brewing

UXL Encyclopedia of Science
COPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group, Inc.

Brewing

Brewing is the multistage process of making beer and other alcoholic malt beverages. Brewing has taken place around the world for thousands of years, and brewed beverages are staples in the diets of many cultures. Although the main modern ingredients in beer are water, barley, hops, and yeast, people have brewed with products as varied as rice, corn, cassava, pumpkins, sorghum, and millet.

History

Archaeologists have turned up evidence that the Sumerian people in the Middle East were brewing barley grain as long as 8,000 years ago. Ancient

Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, and Inca also made beer. These early people may have discovered the basic processes of brewing when they observed—and then tasted—what happened to fruit juices or cereal extracts left exposed to the wild yeasts that naturally float in the air.

Over the centuries, breweries sprang up throughout Europe where there was good water for brewing. During the Middle Ages (400–1450), monasteries became the centers for brewing, and the monks originated brewing techniques and created many of the beers still popular today.

Bottled beer was introduced by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1875. The Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company released the first canned beer in America in 1935.

Words to Know

Ale: A top-fermented beer that until the latter part of the nineteenth century was not flavored with hops.

Fermentation: Process during which yeast consume the sugars in the wort and release alcohol and carbon dioxide as byproducts.

Malt: Barley grain that has germinated, or sprouted, for a short period and is then dried.

Wort: The sugar-water solution made when malted barley is steeped in water and its complex sugars break down into simple sugars.

Yeast: A microorganism of the fungus family that promotes alcoholic fermentation and is also used as a leavening (fermentation) agent in baking.

Brewing process

The basic steps to brewing beer are malting, mashing, boiling, fermentation, aging, and finishing. During malting, barley grains are soaked in water until they begin to germinate, or sprout. The brewer then removes the grains and quickly dries them in a kiln. The dried barley grains are called malted barley or just plain malt. During the mashing phase, the brewer mixes the dried malt with water and heats the mixture until the starchy components in the malt are converted and released into the mixture as simple sugars. The malt is then removed from the mixture, leaving an amber liquid called wort (pronounced wert).

The wort is then heated to a boil and maintained at that temperature for a period of time. During boiling, the brewer adds hops, dried blossoms from the hop plant, which give beer its characteristic bitter flavor and aroma. After the wort is cooled, yeast is added to begin the fermentation stage. These organisms consume the simple sugars in the wort, giving off alcohol and carbon dioxide in the process. The brew is then stored in tanks for several weeks or months while it ages and its flavor develops. To finish the beer, the brewer clarifies the liquid by filtering out the yeast, then packages it in kegs, bottles, or cans.

Types of beer

Beer is usually categorized into two types: ale and lager. Ale is made with a variety of yeast that rise to the top of the fermentation tank and that produce a higher alcohol content than lagers. Ales range from fruity-tasting pale ales to dark and roasty stouts. Lager (from the German word meaning to store) originated in the Bavarian region of Germany. Lager, the most popular beer style in the United States, is made with bottom-fermenting yeast. Lager styles include pilsner (a golden beer with a distinctive hop flavor) and bock (a dark, strong, malty beer).

[See alsoFermentation; Yeast ]

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brewing

brewing is as ancient as distilling, and had a long evolution prior to its expansion during the 18th and 19th cents. to become a large-scale industry pioneering mass production. Its basic raw materials are barley, hops, and water, and the process involves the infusion of malted barley and water, followed by fermentation of the liquid or wort drawn from the mixture. In the medieval period ale-brewing prevailed and it was not until the early 15th cent. that hops were added to the wort for flavouring and as a preservative. The resulting beverage was known as ‘beere’ or ‘biere’ to distinguish it from ale, which was rarely hopped. Many householders from the gentry downwards, and most retailers, brewed their own beer.

From the beginning of the 18th cent. rising population accelerated a long-term trend towards larger breweries. Among the more important firms established at the time were Whitbread, Guinness, and Younger. From the outset these and other family firms dominated an industry which expanded rapidly along parallel paths. Every town of consequence had its brewery, while in the cities like London, Edinburgh, and Dublin much larger units began to evolve. The spectacular growth of Burton upon Trent was in part due to the excellence of the local water, but it also benefited from the town's central position once a national canal network had been established. The size of a brewery generally reflected the size of its immediate market, since beer is a bulky commodity and transport costs were high. Partly to counter this, brewing had its own peculiar marketing arrangements, with a high proportion of output sold through tied houses under the ownership of the brewing companies themselves. Concentration also made the industry an increasingly easy target for the excise, though the strength of beer and the duties payable have varied considerably since the 18th cent.

The expansion of the industry during the latter half of the 19th cent. outstripped its earlier growth. Brewing benefited from rapid advances in science and technology, especially from a deeper understanding of the chemistry involved, and from developments like refrigeration and bottling. The Institute of Brewing was set up in 1886 to disseminate this research. By this time the brewing industry encompassed hundreds of firms of various sizes across Britain, retailing beer through thousands of outlets. The industry was pervasive in other respects. Through its raw material needs it retained close links with agriculture and the countryside; it continued to be conspicuously taxed; and the sale of beer was increasingly enmeshed in complex licensing laws. In all these areas, especially when the temperance movement was active, the industry was forced into the forefront of national politics.

The years from the First World War to the late 1950s were characterized by rationalization and amalgamation, an almost continuous decline in production, and increased taxation. Notable product changes, begun in the Victorian era, saw a shift from dark, heavy beers to lighter, brighter beers and ales. Lager, pioneered by Tennent in Glasgow and Jeffrey in Edinburgh, along with bottled beers, increased greatly in popularity. Experimental canning was tried in the 1930s. After some painful readjustment in the 1950s and early 1960s, the industry was dominated by six conglomerates, mainly producing keg and lager beers. However, about 80 regional and local brewers managed to maintain their independence, and partly encouraged by the Campaign for Real Ale, successfully maintained the production of traditional cask beers.

Ian Donnachie

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brewing

brewing The process by which beer is made. Fermentation of sugars from barley grain by the yeasts Saccharomycescerevisiae and S. uvarum (or S. carlsbergenesis) produces alcohol (ethanol). In the first stage the barley grain is soaked in water, a process known as malting. The grain is then allowed to germinate and the natural enzymes of the grain (the amylases and the maltases) convert the starch to maltose and then to glucose. The next stage is kilning or roasting, in which the grains are dried and crushed. The colour of a beer depends on the temperature used for this process: the higher the temperature, the darker the beer. In the next stage, mashing, the crushed grain is added to water at a specific temperature and any remaining starch is converted to sugar; the resultant liquid is the raw material of brewing, called wort. The yeast is then added to the wort to convert the sugar to alcohol, followed by hops, which give beer its characteristic flavour. Hops are the female flowers of the vine Humulus lupulus; they contain resins (humulones, cohumulones, and adhumulones) that give beer its distinctive bitter taste.

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brewing

brewing Preparation of beer and stout by using yeast as a catalyst in the alcoholic fermentation of liquors containing malt and hops. In beer brewing, a malt liquor (wort) is made from crushed, germinated barley grains. Hops are added to the boiling wort, both to impart a bitter flavour and also to help to clarify the beer and keep it free from spoilage by microbes. The clear, filtered wort is cooled and inoculated with brewer's yeast, which ferments part of the sugar from malt into alcohol.

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